You can have someone present without being at your event: Holograms. Ashley C talks all about holograms and how they are changing the events industry. Listen to the expert in the market who has created the patents for this engaging experience!

Ashley Crowder, Co-Founder and CEO of VNTANA

Tell us holographs?

We are all about putting the digital into the real world. If any of you have kids or have played Pokemon Go that is one version of mixed reality. Your phone can act as a third eye. You also have headsets you can wear that put the digital in the real world. With these only the person with the device can see. At VNTANA we built hardware to do holographic projections. Everyone in the room can the see and interact with the digital together. We do keynote presentations, true live. I can beam myself next time, I’ll be in LA and my hologram will be here.

You are doing movie magic but for real. She told us before, we patented all of this ourselves. How did you develop this?

We are a tech company, a team of engineers. My background is engineering, we have about 15 patents on hardware and software to do this. In the beginning we were using projectors but we switched to LED because it’s brighter. Now we can do things in bright environments.

What is the use for this?

About 7 years ago we found a key use cases people love.

1.Someone can’t be there we can beam them in live, or pre record their hologram. We just did a hologram of Kobe Bryant.

2.Lots of leveraging endorsement deals. For Adidas we did holograms of Stella McCartney.

3.Other interactive experiences to show off products and understand product preferences.

How do you beam in live?

We need dedicated fiber, really good dedicated internet on both sides.5G is coming and we are working with a few different telecom providers to show it off on the 5G network.

What about stages? Are you beaming in keynotes?

Yes we do a number of keynote presentations. That is a lot of our life-size holograms.

You use holograms to show off dead celebrities?

We provide the hardware but we let other people do the “digital resurrection”. We can help people, we have partners who specialize in digital recreation, it get’s expensive. You can’t use old footage it’s CGI. You need to create a photo realistic model of that person and you animate it. We prefer to stick with the living and products!

Have you met and worked with famous people?

Yes leveraging endorsement deals. These brands pay so much money to use their likeness.

Where do you see the technology going?

It’s super exciting, using it as a new medium. Even if the person is there, if they are launching a product the hologram can show up on stage next to them. We are excited about being able to push he boundaries with the creative and content side.

You are a speaker tomorrow what are you talking about?

How you can use mixed reality to influence the attendee journey at an event. Why do you want to do it? What is the purpose of the tech? Then figure out what you want to do. Rob Thomas, we did a great hologram karaoke for his tour it was really successful because it was a holistic approach. He talked about it on his radio show. They published it and you got to sing karaoke with the hologram. I always say don’t put technology in the corner.

With these experiences people are willing to give their information freely because it’s a fun experience.

How much does this cost?

The cost depends on the size of the hologram. Is if life-size or a small kiosk display and content. Does the content need to be created for it? We have done a lot with our software to automate the process. In general you can start between 10 – 20,000 range and go up. Realistically people say, this is doable.